In his first extensive interview since his near-death hospital experience, wrestling legend Ric Flair opened up to People.com about his out-of-control lifestyle.
Flair told People:
I didn’t think I was an alcoholic, but obviously I was. I never drank when I was working, but as soon as work was over, I went right to the mill.
A little more than a month ago, Flair was rushed to an Atlanta hospital where he was put into a medically induced coma. Doctors inserted a pacemaker and removed a bowel.
Flair told People it “scared the sh-t out of me.” The 68-year-old former wrestler is still recovering in an Atlanta convalescent center.
Thursday on ESPN’s ‘Dan Le Batard Show,” Flair recounted his hard-living ways:
When I started in the business in 1972, we drove 3,000 miles a week, we drank beer on the road … threw cans out the windows and all the stuff, no cops, it was just a way of life. Then pretty soon, it was drinking a beer, getting to the hotel, drinking liquor.
Flair said he would never drink before wrestling, but that he would consume about 4,000 calories of booze a day. “It’d be like 20 drinks a day,” he said.
But Flair hopes to put the health scare and the drinking behind him.
“I’ll never drink again,” Flair told People. “I never want to go through this again.”
